Revised: 18-Aug-1987 - DECWRL::"/gateway.doc" [NOTE: In August 1987 the mail gateway was converted from a pair of VAX 11/750's (RHEA and DECWRL), one running VMS and the other Ultrix, to a single VAX 8530 running Ultrix. Old forms of gateway addressing using RHEA::DECWRL:: will be supported for a while, but they will stop working before too long. Change your mailing lists.] A MAIL gateway between Easynet and the UUCP network and DARPA Internet (including CSNET) is provided by the Western Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, California. Hopefully this service will provide improved communications between the DEC community and the Usenet and Internet communities. At one point our ability to provide this service was severely jeopardized by the mailing of a chain letter through our gateway to the DARPA Internet. Chain letters on the Internet are explicitly illegal and any site responsible for sending one is liable to be banned from the Internet. It is therefore crucial to our continued ability to provide this gateway service that such chain letters not be sent. Mailing from Easynet to a UUCP site: ------------------------------------------------ To mail a message from an Easynet node to a UNIX system on UUCP you say (NOTE the required double quotes, VMS users, see "Using Quoted Addresses from a VMS System:" below): To: DECWRL::"node-1!node-2!...!user" The UUCP network is addressed with an explicit routing list. You have to know how to route through to your desired destination. See the table at the end for the current list of UUCP sites that DECWRL dials. Mailing from Easynet to an Internet net site: ----------------------------------------------------- To mail a message from an Easynet node to someone at an Internet site (say MIT-MULTICS.ARPA) you say (NOTE the required double quotes, VMS users, see "Using Quoted Addresses from a VMS System:" below): To: DECWRL::"user@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA" The Internet is in the process changing to domain based names. The old .ARPA domain is being replaced by other top level and sub-domains. The major top level domains are .EDU educational institutions .COM commercial .GOV government .MIL military .ORG miscellaneous organizations that don't fit elsewhere .NET network operations There are also a number of top level domains for countries using the ISO two letter abbreviations. Within these domains are multiple levels of sub domains representing independent naming authorities. Digital operates the DEC.COM domain in the Internet; other large domains include MIT.EDU, CMU.EDU and BERKELEY.EDU. Do not use host names without a domain. A recent copy of the Internet host table can be found at DECWRL::"/etc/hosts.txt". The first name listed for each host is the official name and the only one you should use in mail messages. Mailing from Easynet to other networks: -------------------------------------------------- The gateway supports connection to several other networks using a pseudo-domain syntax. These addresses are translated by the gateway to the proper form to address the gateways into those networks. To address users in these networks you say (NOTE the required double quotes, VMS users, see "Using Quoted Addresses from a VMS System:" below): To: DECWRL::"user@host.domain" The following domains are currently supported: BITNET, CSNET, MAILNET, and OZ (once called SUN). Many of these networks are joining in the conversion to domain based naming. In particular, many .EDU and .COM addresses are actually reached through CSNET. The domain system makes all of this transparent to the user. Mailing from Easynet to the Fido network: -------------------------------------------------- Fidonet provides a gateway from the Internet. Fidonet domain addresses look like To: DECWRL::"First.Last@p4.f3.n2.z1.fidonet.org" where First Last is the user's name. In some cases and underscore can be used instead of a period. The user's Fido address is 1:2/3.4. In Fido parlance, this means Zone 1, Network 2, Fido (node) 3, Pointnode 4. Substitute your intended recipient's actual address, of course. The 'p4' term need be supplied only if the recipient is on a "point node". If you don't know the zone, use zone 1 for the U.S.A. Mailing from Easynet Usenet newsgroups: -------------------------------------------------- Usenet is a world wide collection of distributed bulletin boards (similar in some aspects to VAXNOTES). Digital employees may learn more about Usenet in the Usenet notes conference (consult your notes directory for current location). Newsgroups are organized in a heirarchy indicated by multipart names like sci.space.shuttle comp.mail.headers rec.arts.movies The mail gateway can be used to post articles to these groups by addressing mail To: DECWRL::"groupname@usenet" for example To: DECWRL::"rec.arts.movies@usenet" Please read the introductory information in the Usenet notes conference before sending Usenet articles. Mailing from a UUCP site to an Easynet Node: ---------------------------------------------------- When mailing to an Easynet node (say RDVAX), you need to specify a path to decwrl. The rest of the path to RDVAX would look like: To: node-1!node-2!...!decwrl!rdvax.dec.com!user Some UUCP sites which support so-called "smart" mailers may accept addresses of the form To: user@rdvax.dec.com and automatically produce the optimal path to decwrl. Mailing from an Internet site to an Easynet Node: --------------------------------------------------------- To mail a message from an Internet site to an Easynet node (say RDVAX), you say: To: user@rdvax.dec.com This will work if the mailer at the originating site uses the Internet domain servers to resolve the address. If the site has not yet converted to using the domain servers, an alternate form can be used: To: user%rdvax.dec.com@decwrl.dec.com or To: <@decwrl.dec.com:user@rdvax.dec.com> The latter is the technically correct form (called source route addressing) but may not be acceptable to all mailers. A few other forms are still accepted for backward compatibility but their use is discouraged and they will not be described here. Replying to messages: ----------------------------- The REPLY command (or equivalent) generates correctly formatted addresses in all known cases. Users replying to UUCP originated messages should check the generated address for missing nodes in the routing path by matching it against both the "From:" and the "Return-Path:" lines in the header. Using Quoted Addresses from a VMS System: ------------------------------------------------ The double quoted portion of the address field can cause some difficulties in DCL commands and in DCL procedures. VMS users should be aware of DCL's propensity to strip off such double quotes making the address totally useless. There is no problem when standard VAX-11 MAIL is invoked and the address is specified in response to the "TO: " prompt. If you use the MAIL command at the DCL level, then the address must be enclosed in quotes and the literal quotes must be "doubled up", e.g. $ mail test.msg "DECWRL::""decvax!aps""" /subj="Testing 1,2,3" Nmail (version 8.0 or later) is integrated with VMS MAIL for sending mail and therefore you can use any address format that MAIL can handle; simply precede the address by NM% to indicate use of Nmail. Older versions of Nmail, implemented as a .COM file, may or may not (depending on antiquity) require you to double up the quotes and enclose the whole address in quotes. The only reason you should be running an old version of Nmail is if you are using VMS V3.x. The mail command inside the NOTES utility appears to strip out embedded quotes. Enclosing the entire addressee in double quotes and quoting the literal quotes works fine here too. If you have trouble ----------------------------- Although the gateway is operated by volunteer administrators who have other work to do, we do try to help out with problems. Address your questions to DECWRL::POSTMASTER or postmaster@decwrl.dec.com or decwrl!postmaster depending on where you are coming from. You can also learn about problems and solutions through the Gateways notes conference. List of uucp sites dialed by decwrl: -------------------------------------------- (Those marked with "*" are major uucp routing nodes. You should prefer uucp routes that use these sites as the first hop from decwrl. Case is significant in uucp host names.) apple Apple Computers, Cupertino, CA adobe Adobe Systems Inc., Palo Alto, CA acornrc Acorn Computers Ltd. Research Centre, Palo Alto, CA *allegra AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ amdcad Advanced Micro Devices, Sunnyvale, CA cae780 Tektronix Inc. (CAE Systems Division), Santa Clara, CA *decvax Digital Equipment Unix Engineering, Merrimack, NH dual Dual Systems Corp., Berkeley, CA *hplabs Hewlett Packard Research Labs, Palo Alto, CA idi Intelligent Decisions, Inc., Palo Alto, CA *ihnp4 AT&T Bell Laboratories, Naperville, IL imagen Imagen Corp., Santa Clara, CA ios Integrated Office Systems, Los Altos, CA logitech Logitech, Inc., Palo Alto, CA microsoft Microsoft, Bellevue, WA mips MIPS Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA mordor Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Livermore, CA muscat Digital Equipment Software Services, Santa Clara, CA sgi Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA purdue Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN pyramid Pyramid Technology Corporation, Mountain View, CA qubix Qubix Graphic Systems, San Jose, CA sci Silicon Compilers, San Jose, CA sequent Sequent Computer System, Inc., Beaverton, OR spar Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, Palo Alto, CA sun Sun Microsystems, Mountain View, CA turtlevax CIMLINC, Inc, Palo Alto, CA *ucbvax University of California, Berkeley, CA